National Telemedicine Center Officially Launched in Zhengzhou

On May 28, the National Telemedicine Center was officially inaugurated at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. This marks the formal upgrade of the “Henan Provincial Telemedicine Center” to the National Telemedicine Center, representing a solid step forward in China’s national strategy to promote the “Internet + Healthcare” development initiative. Reportedly, this is Henan Province’s first national-level medical center.

Telemedicine is a novel healthcare model that has emerged with the advancement of computer and communication technologies, integrating modern medicine closely with these technological fields. It meets the needs for medical assistance and collaboration across hospitals, regions, and even national borders, thereby maximizing the sharing of healthcare resources. This new healthcare model holds significant value in alleviating current challenges in China’s healthcare sector, such as difficulty in accessing medical care, high costs, and disorderly practices. In short, developing telemedicine is an inevitable trend that aligns with the current state of China’s healthcare development and reflects the integration of the medical industry with advanced technology.

Since its establishment at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in 2010, the Henan Provincial Telemedicine Center has, through sustained exploration and the development of technical platforms, become the first in China to build a five-tier telemedicine network spanning the entire province—connecting provincial, municipal, county, township, and village levels—as well as an open and shared comprehensive telemedicine service platform. Its service capabilities encompass remote medical services, telemedical education, research and development in telemedicine, data resource sharing, and health management. The Center has established teaching collaborations and remote consultation sub-centers with more than 500 primary healthcare institutions both within and outside Henan Province, including in Xinjiang, Shanxi, Sichuan, Shandong, and Guizhou, thereby enabling the public to benefit from the shared access to high-quality medical resources.

Furthermore, the hospital has established telemedicine collaborations with medical institutions in the United States, Russia, Europe, and selected African countries. It conducts over 40,000 comprehensive remote consultations annually, performs 500,000 specialized remote diagnostic cases (including pathology, electrocardiography, and imaging), delivers more than 300 remote continuing education training sessions, trains over 400,000 healthcare professionals, and demonstrates more than 1,000 surgical procedures remotely, yielding particularly outstanding results from its telemedicine system applications. It has now become China’s largest, most technologically advanced, most extensively covered, and most functionally comprehensive national demonstration base for telemedicine and regional collaborative medical services.

As the chairing institution of the Telemedicine and Health Informatics Professional Committee under the Chinese Health Information Association, Zhengzhou University First Affiliated Hospital’s telemedicine initiatives have received significant attention and robust support from the Henan Provincial Party Committee and Provincial People’s Government. The hospital’s telemedicine program was included twice among Henan Province’s key livelihood projects, in 2014 and 2016 respectively. In December 2016, it was incorporated into Henan Province’s “13th Five-Year” Plan for the Medical and Health Service System.

Currently, it is responsible for the development of multiple national and provincial/ministerial-level research platforms, including the National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Medical Systems and Applications. It also undertakes numerous major national and provincial/ministerial science and technology projects, such as the formulation of national health information standards and technical guidelines for infrastructure development, as well as projects under the National Key R&D Program. The institution has produced leading scientific and technological achievements in China’s telemedicine sector and has proactively carried out research and translation in fields such as big data analytics for telemedicine and medical artificial intelligence. It serves as a comprehensive science and technology base in China for R&D, translation, and application in the fields of telemedicine/Internet healthcare, healthcare big data, and precision medicine.

The Henan Provincial Telemedicine Center ranks among the national leaders in China in terms of telemedicine service and management capabilities, technical proficiency, research and development capacity, and reserves of professional talent. Its mature operational philosophy and model have provided valuable experience for establishing technical standards, system architectures, and operational models for the development of telemedicine across China.

Professor Zhao Jie, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the Labor Union at The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, as well as Director of the National Telemedicine Center, stated that accelerating the development of “Internet + Healthcare” can enhance the efficiency of medical services, reduce the need for patients to travel, provide greater convenience, and enable more people to access high-quality medical resources. The establishment of the National Telemedicine Center at this hospital reflects the full recognition and strong support from the National Health Commission for the work carried out by The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University and the Henan Provincial Telemedicine Center. Seizing this opportunity, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University will pursue innovative development by leveraging the technical platform advantages of both the hospital and the Henan Provincial Telemedicine Center, as well as its strategic geographic location in Central China and as a key node in the Belt and Road Initiative. The hospital is committed to exploring a data-centric, fully connected pathway for telemedicine development. It aims to lead the construction of a unified national standard system for “Internet + Healthcare,” including telemedicine service platforms, medical quality supervision and information security protection systems, in-depth data application systems, and talent training frameworks. Efforts will be made to extend telemedicine coverage to all medical consortia and county-level hospitals across China, thereby promoting the overall rapid development of the nation’s telemedicine sector. This initiative will support the construction of a tiered diagnosis and treatment system, the strategy for health and medical big data, and healthcare reform, ultimately better serving the Healthy China Strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, and international health assistance efforts.

Source: Dahe Daily · Dahe Client